


a tree that has not blossomed (yet)

by susiecarter



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Extended Universe, Justice League (2017)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Extra Treat, M/M, Pining, Time Travel, Timeline Shenanigans, Translation Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 06:31:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17420861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: An accident involving a Kryptonian device meddled with by Lex Luthor sends Bruce forward, into a future that must not—cannot—be his own.Because sure, Clark's joined the Justice League. Clark's willing to work with Bruce to save the world. Clark's even forgiven him for what he once tried to do. But that doesn't mean they're going to—that doesn't make it plausible that they'd ever be—that they would getmarried.





	a tree that has not blossomed (yet)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [purpose_miner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpose_miner/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [一颗（尚）未开花的树](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18560725) by [Fiona0707](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiona0707/pseuds/Fiona0707)



> That "future self in relationship with unexpected person" freeform was totally irresistible to me, purpose_miner, especially in combination with this pairing! :D I just hope you enjoy this, and that you've had a great Past Imperfect. ♥

 

 

 _I wish I could remember that first day,_  
_first hour, first moment of your meeting me,_  
_if bright or dim the season, it might be_  
_Summer or Winter for aught I can say;_  
_so unrecorded did it slip away,_  
_so blind was I to see and to foresee,_  
_so dull to mark the budding of my tree_  
_that would not blossom yet for many a May._

—from "[I wish I could remember that first day](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50500/i-wish-i-could-remember-that-first-day)", by Christina Rossetti

 

 

Bruce turns the object over in his hands, eyeing it thoughtfully, and then pauses and peers more closely. He leans over and holds it in front of the lens of the database interface he set up in here, which obediently and automatically photographs the side presented to it, and then sets the thing down and types a quick notation that'll be appended to the image file as a caption: _possible intake/output mechanism?_

He rubs at his face, and decides against prying at it right now.

He's just trying to assemble a baseline inventory of everything he'd managed to seize from Luthor's various labs and properties. In the immediate aftermath, he'd been focused on Luthor's research, the boxes and the threat that loomed in the distance beyond—and the files he'd found, the heroes he'd set himself the task of tracking down. Now that it's all over and Steppenwolf has been dealt with, he's finally had the time to start going through the rest of it.

Or at least he's had some of the time. Christ, Luthor generated one hell of a hoard. Bruce has already been here for—six hours? No, nearly seven, by now—and he's nowhere near done. And this isn't even all of it.

Luthor hadn't just visited the crashed ship. He'd taken things off it—with permission or without, and Bruce hasn't decided which thought unsettles him more. Luthor had taken notes, too, and scans; he'd scrabbled after scraps wherever he could, cracking pieces of Kryptonian technology open to see what made them tick.

Except there was no telling whether he'd done it _right_. No telling whether he'd even been trying to. He'd torn some of it apart, spliced the wreckage back together—tried to reverse-engineer the missing pieces, except Luthor's idea of retracing a logical path backward to a point from which he could proceed forward again bore no resemblance to a sane, systematic, responsible scientific endeavor.

Bruce can't afford to store it all in the Cave, or even at the manor, when he doesn't know what the hell most of it does. He's split it up into caches instead, spread across half a dozen Wayne Enterprises properties—locked down and secured, of course, but if any one of them should happen to be discovered and seized by the authorities, he'll still have time to move the rest.

And it's safer for other reasons, too, not to keep it all in one place. As much as he'd like to pry each alien mystery apart and shine a light on its insides, he's already had three close calls. Attempting to remove what had appeared to be nothing but a piece of inert casing from one item had resulted in a blinding flare of purple light and abrupt electricity failure for three city blocks in all directions, just last week.

So sticking a screwdriver into this intriguing valve-like port is probably not a good idea.

Instead, he returns the device carefully to the space of shelf it came from, and moves on to the next, pressing a key to shift forward to the next open record in the database. Object 04-012L—the twelfth item found in what Bruce had designated Site 4, a secret laboratory Luthor had been maintaining on a piece of property just outside Metropolis. With the "L" appended to signify that it showed visible signs of having been tampered with or otherwise altered by Luthor.

This one is larger, and awkwardly shaped; Bruce needs both hands to lift it and move it to the worktable. He sets it down gently, on what may or may not be its base but is at least its flattest side, and then leans in to take a closer look at it.

He can't help but grimace a little. Kryptonian technology is, as a rule, smooth—graceful, almost organic in its curves and tendency toward symmetry, each piece interlocking so cleanly with the next that it's impossible to perceive them as anything but parts of a greater whole.

Which makes Luthor's attempts to—to enhance or redirect the function of this device, or whatever the hell he thought he was doing with it, not only intellectually appalling but visually so. It's _ugly_ , the way Luthor cracked this thing open, the jumble of bolts and wires and soldering spilling out of the open wound he left in the side of it.

Bruce runs his fingertips along the edge of what remains of the casing. Unlikely that Luthor could have broken it; there must be another section somewhere among the 04 objects. If he can find it, he'll need to make a note of the link and keep them together, in case Luthor's modifications can be undone and this thing can be repaired—

The only excuse he has is that he's tired. He's tired and it's late, even for him. He discarded his jacket and rolled up his sleeves hours ago; and he makes every effort to be as careful as possible, considering what he's dealing with, but in the instant his mind is elsewhere, his elbow drops just low enough for the edge of that folded-over cuff to catch on one wire.

The pressure is minute, the tug on the wire faint. But whatever it does, jostle a connection or twist a bit of Luthor's impatient soldering job loose, it's enough.

The thrum builds so quickly that Bruce barely has time to lift his arm away, reflex bringing his hands up defensively in front of his face, before it peaks. No light this time, he thinks resignedly, and then there's a—a _pulse_ , a strange throbbing waver in the air.

It knocks him off his feet. Or he thinks it does; it's all a whirl, the impact against him and the sense that he's been disoriented, displaced—

 

 

—except when he lands, he doesn't hit the floor, doesn't black out. He comes up against a—against the back of a chair.

There is still some suggestion of velocity; his head drops, his neck snapping back, and there's an immediate throb in his temples, the ache of sudden bracing tension knotting up his shoulders. His eyes have squeezed shut, involuntary, and as the chair shifts beneath him at the movement he finds himself throwing out his hands, even though there shouldn't be anything there.

There shouldn't be a _chair_ here. There was only one in the room, and it was beside the worktable, the computer—he hadn't sat in it, hadn't so much as touched it.

And yet there's a chair beneath him now, and his splayed hands come down with a muted slap against the surface of a desk.

He catches his breath, steadies himself, and opens his eyes, and it's immediately and unmistakably obvious that something is wrong; he's not wearing the same clothes.

He pushes aside the pain in his head and begins to catalogue the possibilities. However outlandish they may seem—he'd rather cast a wide net than be caught off-guard by a reality he refused to consider.

So: has he, somehow, been displaced into someone else's body? No, he decides after a second. His clothes are different, yes, but he recognizes them; the shirt, subtle blue pinstriping, and the belt, though the slacks are unfamiliar—dark blue, and they look new. The shirt is his. It just isn't the plain white one he'd been wearing a moment ago. His arms are his, too, and his hands—

His breath catches, sharp, in the back of his throat. His hands. There's a—there's a ring. A ring, on his left fourth finger.

He stares at it. An alternate universe, he thinks distantly. Or, if he wants to be optimistic about it, time travel. But no, no need for optimism. It could be a ruse, a new identity he's taken on just in time to be struck with an inconvenient case of amnesia. A cover? Except that doesn't make sense either, he's—where is he?

He looks up.

The desk is chrome, or something similar, sturdy and well-designed, subtly gleaming. And the bank of monitors mounted along it is dizzying—the number of them, the _size_ , the definition. Even before his eyes manage to pick out a date and timestamp displaying along the edge of one of them, he's already inclined to think—and yes, there it is after all, 2024. There's just something about them, the thinness of the displays and the clarity, the color, an unfamiliar sense of _depth_ to the imagery, that implies a baseline advancement in technology compared to what he's used to.

And then he belatedly registers the views the nearest half-dozen are displaying, and can't tear his gaze away.

It's security footage, that's obvious enough. But it's—it's the manor. He's in the manor.

In the present day, the renovations are proceeding apace. He'll have something fit to present to the rest of them within a few weeks, though of course he'll want their input before he attempts to finalize the interior layout and arrangements; but there's a quiet stubborn part of him that refuses to assume anything will come of it. There's an arrogance to it, he sometimes thinks. As there is an arrogance to so much of what he does, to the desperate assertion he makes every time he suits up: that he has the skill and the strength, the capability, the will, to make a difference that matters. But when it comes to the manor—he's particularly conscious of the irony of it. That _he_ should take a broken thing and attempt to turn it into something valuable, something worthwhile; as if he knows what that even means, what that even looks like—

The League as it currently stands was formed through a combination of luck, stubbornness, and the specific personalities of its members—the willing extension of kindness, commitment, and, in one case in particular, inexplicable and undeserved mercy.

Bruce knows better than to rely on lightning to strike twice.

But this—this is the manor. This is the manor as he's dreamt it might one day be, once the work he's begun is completed. Adopted by the League as a base of operations, a headquarters, a place of safety and security where heroes might find themselves welcome in times of need. A home.

The front exterior view shows a long paved drive, hedges, a generous turnaround in front of an entryway; and though Bruce doesn't recognize most of the cars, he can't help but suspect that the bright blue offroad vehicle spattered generously with mud is Arthur's, and the sleekly graceful silver two-door is Diana's. If he doesn't miss his guess, they're also all electric.

The side exterior cameras show gardens, trees, mowed green lawns rolling away; and the interior views closest to his seat are of an entry hall done in marble, wide double staircases curving upward, a lounge whose most noticeable feature from this camera angle is the largest sofa Bruce has ever seen, an equipment room, a laboratory, a technical workspace, a gym—

Everything he'd ever considered, every option he'd ever idly penciled in across empty spans of blueprint paper. All of it and then some. Even this room, a security installation from which the building and grounds could be safely and automatically monitored.

He should be making mental notes. Comparing the apparent footprint of this building with his own memories, looking for alterations and additions, changes that can help him work out exactly where it is he's ended up.

But for a long moment, all he can do is sit there and look at it all, and try to catch his breath.

He flattens his hands against the desk, and makes himself stand. He feels lightheaded; he aches; he can't tell whether it's this older version of himself he's landed in, or the aftereffects of that pulse.

But this body is his own. He doesn't doubt it anymore. So that leaves—well, plenty: hallucination, dream. His own future, however unlikely it might be—he thumbs the ring absently—and he's either been thrown forward into it or has lived it but suffered a loss of all the memory between the moment he stood in front of the machine and this one. If he had to guess, the former's more likely; an event, a phenomenon, occurred at that end. All the evidence suggests that here, at this end, he's been doing nothing but sitting in this monitor room by himself. Or a step sideways—this is a future, even Bruce Wayne's future, but not _his_. He hasn't forgotten the version of Barry who came to him, the warning he'd been given about Clark. He's pretty sure he's avoided that future; but that doesn't mean it stopped existing, only that it was some other Bruce Wayne who'd fucked up badly enough to be stuck living it.

He crosses the room, toward the door, and opens it. There are voices coming from downstairs. Some of them are recognizable; that's Diana, and that's definitely Arthur. But some aren't.

Bruce hesitates. Until he has a clearer idea what's happening, it would be pointless to attempt to disclose his predicament. What could he say when he doesn't even have a reasonable working hypothesis to offer, let alone a potential solution? Besides, if someone caused this for a reason, hoping to render him disoriented and helpless—Luthor, even, through some time-delayed effect that's related to the machine after all—then it's for the best if it doesn't appear to have worked, if he seems the same as ever.

But if there's someone down there that this Bruce would know and he doesn't, will he be able to cover for it? He could probably bluff his way through it in front of Arthur, Barry, even Victor; but not Diana.

He stands there teetering on the edge of decision for a moment too long. Suddenly there are footsteps—a figure, coming up the stairs at the end of the hallway, and a face turned toward him. A smile Bruce would recognize anywhere, though it's rarely been unleashed in his direction.

"Bruce," Clark says, warm, fond, pleased. "There you are," and he comes down the corridor toward Bruce in a handful of quick jogging steps, and then he—

Then his hand settles easily, casually, against Bruce's waist. Bruce feels as though he's watching himself move into the touch from somewhere else; but of course he shouldn't allow himself to pause. Of course he should lift his own hand and bring it to rest on Clark's elbow. If this is normal behavior for this Clark, for the Bruce this Clark is familiar with, then Bruce can't provoke suspicion with dismay or startlement, withdrawal.

"Clark," he hears himself say. "Just finishing up a few simulations."

"Sure," Clark murmurs, still with that—that warmth, that unbearable dizzying warmth. "Well, come down when you're done, all right? I haven't seen you all day."

"Of course," Bruce says. "Five minutes, tops."

And Clark's smile widens again, breaks across his face as bright as dawn. "So, half an hour, then," he says, sweet and teasing, and then—

Bruce does see the signs. He could hardly miss them. It's just that he doesn't quite believe them, even as they're stacking themselves up in front of him: Clark's free hand reaching up, but it must be for another reason, something he hasn't thought of; fingertips against his jaw, his cheek, warm broad thumb against his chin—alternate explanation, he tells himself, even as Clark is leaning into him, and then their mouths touch. Then Clark's _kissing_ him, and he can't think anything at all.

After a long and sunlit hour, a day—six seconds, he corrects himself firmly—Clark releases him. "Okay, I'll give you ten, and then I'm coming back to carry you downstairs myself," Clark says gently, and then is gone.

 

 

Bruce wastes perhaps thirty seconds standing there, afterward. He takes a step back that feels suddenly necessary, to return himself to the shelter of the monitor room—as if to remain in the hallway will somehow constitute still greater exposure, will leave him any more vulnerable.

And then he grinds to a halt, staring numbly at the wall. He only realizes he'd lifted a hand to his mouth when he feels it there, his own unsteady fingertips against his lips; and he drops it immediately, folds his arms across his chest to keep it pinned, since it clearly can't be trusted.

He needs to review the possibilities, in light of this new data. That's all. Hallucination, dream—but if this is either, he suspects it can't solely be attributed to his own brain; there must be some sort of external mechanism inducing or constructing it. It's progressed chronologically without skips, gaps, or sudden transitions. Every action he's taken has had an antecedent and a realistic consequence; pushing himself up out of the chair resulted in nothing more or less than his achieving a standing position, rather than sending him rocketing through the ceiling or bouncing him into a different building entirely, the way it might have in an ordinary dream. Clark's appearance is congruent with Bruce's memory—his hair is a little longer, the curl less controlled than the last time Bruce saw him; there might have been a new line or two crinkling into place around his eyes when he smiled. No alterations that can't be explained by that "2024" date Bruce had seen on the computer, except—

Well. Except the sole observation that leaves Bruce inclined to eliminate both amnesia and travel within his own timeline.

Clark had had a ring, too.

The same design as Bruce's: simple, a plain rounded band. The same color, with a sheen suggestive of a Kryptonian alloy. A little larger; between the two of them, it was Clark who had the broader knuckles, if only marginally so. It had glinted at Bruce as Clark had raised that hand—his left—to touch Bruce's face. It had been smooth, warm, against Bruce's cheek.

Bruce swallows, once and then again, and closes his eyes, driving his teeth into the inside of his lip. Focus. Focus on what's important here.

This room—the computers. He should have access to a database, a network connection. Beyond a certain level of detail, a hallucination or dream becomes implausible; Bruce has experienced enough of both to be familiar with the limitations of his own mind. And if he's somehow been tipped sideways into an alternate universe, he should be able to track down either an originating change, if the divergence was recent enough, or identify at least some of the resulting alterations to the timeline.

Besides the obvious.

He returns to the chair, settles into it and reaches for the slim backlit keyboard. The internet still exists, though the connection here is even faster than Bruce is used to, opening a dozen tabs and watching them all load almost instantaneously. And while he supposes he ought to start with some snapshots of world history, to work out how far back the differences go, he can admit to a certain morbid curiosity about his own life.

Who is this Bruce Wayne, anyway? What is he like? Just how much had he had to do differently, to land himself a Clark who looked at him as though—

He frowns absently at the first page of search results. Black Zero still happened here. Doomsday still happened. And—he adds a keyword—Superman still died. Wonder Woman's intervention, the first genuinely convincing evidence of the existence of the Gotham Batman, Lex Luthor imprisoned.

At a glance, the general sequence of events is—is the same.

He stares at the screen, face hot, throat tight. There must be a difference. There _must_ be. Something that's already happened; something that set him and this Bruce on separate paths long ago. He just has to look more closely.

He tells himself he shouldn't go downstairs until he can account for any changes in the roster of the Justice League. But he finds himself prying his way backward past Steppenwolf—past Barry, Victor, Arthur; all the same—and past Doomsday, into himself.

His work; Wayne Enterprises. Alfred. Gotham, the Joker—Dick. His parents. Even his date of birth—surely there's some chance it might have mattered if he'd come into the world a little early, a little late. But nothing's different. _Nothing_.

Belatedly, he checks a handful of significant historical events. Even if the outlines of this Bruce Wayne's life are the same, there's still the possibility that some fundamental shift in this universe altered him nonetheless.

This life isn't Bruce's. It can't be. It defies all sense, all logic, the sheer relentless weight of probability.

He let Clark die, and then tore him from his rest. Clark's permitted him to get away with it, treated him with politeness and cordiality and even cautious warmth—because Clark couldn't hold a grudge and save the world at the same time. And Clark's already demonstrated his willingness to choose murder, agony, and his own death over letting Earth suffer. Setting aside even well-earned hatred of Bruce Wayne had probably seemed like a small price in comparison.

But that doesn't mean he'll ever—that doesn't mean there's even a fraction of a chance that he might—

Bruce flexes his hands, flattens them across the keyboard: looks down, at the silvery gleam of that goddamn ring.

This is the manor; Bruce must have been responsible for setting up the computer systems, not least because he'd never have trusted it to anyone else.

In the Cave, deep inside a system folder, Bruce keeps a subdirectory full of what appear to be bog-standard initialization files, accessed infrequently but regularly by certain administrative programs. And among them, visually indistinguishable, he has always kept a backlog of miscellaneous personal notes.

This version of him may have done something similar. However different this Bruce is—and he must be. He _must_ be.

But there's a chance that Bruce will be able to find it.

 

 

It shouldn't have worked.

Administrative permissions are required to access the subdirectory. On a whim, Bruce entered the passcode he's currently using in the Cave—a randomized sequence of words, easier to memorize than a string of letters and numbers but harder to brute-force. And it's generated anew every thirty-six hours, it's—there are thousands of other things he should need to try.

Except it worked.

Bruce stares at the space where the prompt had appeared. Had appeared, and is now gone, in defiance of all logic.

Something somewhere in his chest contracts, slow and unsteady and inexorable.

It isn't confirmation of anything. It isn't. But—

But if this is a closed loop, his future self will remember it having happened. He'd know what to change the passcode to in order to ensure that Bruce would be able to access this folder.

It makes sense, except for all the ways it's utterly impossible.

Only one file in the folder was edited yesterday. He should check them all, if he's going to get any sort of grasp on this situation; but there's no reason not to check that one first.

He opens it in the system-default text editor—familiar, lightweight, clearly an updated version of the openware Bruce coded himself when he grew frustrated with the industry standby.

 _It's real_ , says the first line.

_You don't need to do anything. You have between two and two and a half hours left—you didn't make a note of the time when you arrived_

Bruce glances belatedly at the corner of the screen: 2:14 pm.

_but that's the best estimate I can give you. You were knocked out of place, in a manner of speaking; you'll rebound back where you're supposed to be, after a little while. There's a time dilation effect in play. No one back there will notice anything. It's safe._

Bruce draws a slow breath, and allows the tension to leave his hands. Two hours, two and a half—and his body left behind. He hadn't wanted to contemplate who might find it, what might happen to it; but if anyone is able to grasp that worry, it's—himself.

_It's a closed loop. I remember. The space-time continuum is intact._

And then, after half a dozen blank lines:

_Don't be cruel to Clark. It won't work. Just tell him._

_He'll believe you._

 

 

He goes downstairs.

He watched the security footage long enough to get a sense for the layout of this place—and to realize that he couldn't hear distant voices anymore because everyone else was leaving, cars pulling away and Barry speeding off with a crackle, two or three other people Bruce didn't know leaping into the air or vanishing.

Clark's all that's left.

It should make him feel safer. _Just tell him. He'll believe you_ —and with no one else besides Clark that he needs to fool, that's all his objective concerns settled at once.

But Bruce has always been painfully aware that there's something unnameably and obliquely dangerous about sharing space with Clark; about _him_ sharing space with Clark, nothing to divert his attention and no one else to look at.

And that danger is no longer oblique, facing a Clark who can't be relied upon not to kiss him.

He pauses by the entryway to a large and gleaming kitchen, where Clark is just speeding through scrubbing the last of a batch of used dishes. And of course Clark hears him coming, twists around and turns the water off and has taken a half-stride toward him before visibly remembering his hands are wet. "Bruce, there you are. Uh, give me one second."

"It's fine," Bruce says, and Clark, hands slowing around the dishtowel, shoots him a glance that's wry and much too knowing for Bruce's taste.

"I bet that's about the last thing you want to call this," Clark says, and tilts his head. "It happened, didn't it?"

Bruce looks at him, and very carefully doesn't turn around and leave immediately.

"It's okay," Clark adds quickly. "Don't worry. I asked everyone if they wouldn't mind heading out for a little while—I said we needed to, uh, talk." He reaches up to rub at the back of his neck, flushing, and then clears his throat. "So you don't have to cover for it or anything. It's just you and me in here."

"You know," Bruce hears himself say.

"Sure," Clark says blankly. "You told me." And then he stops, and his face changes just a little: rueful, suddenly, the corner of his mouth twisting. "You—tell me a lot of things, now," he adds, more quietly. "You said it would be today, but you didn't know exactly when. And then I went upstairs, and you were—" He stops again, and bites his lip. "I don't know. There was something about the way you looked at me, I guess. It made me think of—" He laughs, quick and bright, and shakes his head. "You said you'd be coming forward from 'back then'. When you say it like that, it means, oh," and he lifts a hand and tilts it from side to side, an approximating gesture, "a year or so to either side of when I was gone."

 _When I was gone_. It comes out easily, steadily. What a comfortable euphemism, Bruce thinks.

Clark's watching him with sudden cautiousness, as if it's occurred to him that Bruce might spook. "I'm not—still—"

"No," Bruce says. "No. You came back. You're fine."

And for some reason, that makes Clark smile at him. "Good," Clark says. "Good. I'm glad." He takes a careful step toward Bruce, not looking away. "I don't die again. Or at least I haven't yet. If you were worried about that."

Bruce looks away. "The thought crossed my mind," he says, and he forces it to come out light, level.

But Clark doesn't seem fooled. "Of course it did," he murmurs, and when Bruce glances up again he's still looking, watching, gaze unbearably soft.

"What else did I tell you?"

"Not much," Clark says, and then, another flash of that smile: "You are still _you_ , you know."

His tone is light, teasing. But then he goes quiet.

And when he speaks again, it's to say, very gently, "You didn't have to—change, or anything. For me to—"

Bruce doesn't know what his face does then, but all at once Clark's reaching for him, those broad strong hands at his shoulders.

"We got to know each other, that's all," Clark says. "I'm not trying to tell you I suddenly decided you were perfect. You're stubborn and paranoid and self-sabotaging, you—" His mouth goes tight. "You get hurt, you try to pretend it's nothing, I yell at you. _I'm_ stubborn, too, I'm reckless and I don't always listen to you, sometimes I get all—sometimes I'm too deep in my own head, all the things I think Superman should be and do, to hear you.

"But it works anyway, that's the thing. We trust each other, we understand each other."

As if that isn't the most frightening thing he could possibly have said, Bruce thinks distantly. To be faced with a Clark who knows him five years better, _marriage_ better; who can't be fooled anymore. Who looks at him and—

And _sees_ him, and there's nothing he can do to prevent it.

Case in point: Clark's grip softens, his face softens. He reaches up with one hand and skims the backs of three fingers against Bruce's jaw, and says, "Sorry. I guess you probably hate that part the most."

Bruce closes his eyes, and ought to twist his face away from Clark's hand but doesn't.

"I wonder about it sometimes," Clark adds, low. "Once you told me about this, I mean. Whether it's a paradox after all—some kind of chicken-and-egg thing. Whether you fell in love with me because you saw what it could be like, except you only saw what it could be like because it had already happened. Whether there's something I have to make sure to do or say while you're here, and if I don't, then—"

He falls silent.

Bruce reviews what he said, once, twice, and can't make sense of it. He has to look—and when he does, Clark's gazing at Bruce with one corner of his mouth drawing up wryly, and something strange in his eyes. Something small and unhappy and resigned.

"But you haven't brought it up. So I guess it doesn't bother you—future-you, I mean."

Bruce blinks. "It doesn't bother him because it's an academic question."

Clark raises an eyebrow. "I mean, normally time travel paradoxes can't really help but be academic questions," he agrees. "But given that it happened to you and you know it—"

"No, no. I mean it's irrelevant," Bruce tries to explain.

The look on Clark's face says enlightenment has failed to dawn.

It's lucky, in a way, that this particular set of circumstances makes it not only possible but genuinely appropriate to refer to himself in the third person. "It doesn't bother him because as far as he's concerned it's purely hypothetical. He did. He already did. Before this ever—he already did."

Clark's staring at him now, blue eyes wide and startled. And of course a little sleight of hand can't stop him from hearing what Bruce is telling him; of course he cuts right to the heart of it anyway. "You—that long?"

Bruce doesn't say anything.

"I didn't know that," Clark says slowly.

Bruce looks away. He hears a long, slow breath let out, and then—

Then a blissfully cool palm settles across his forehead, fingertips just brushing his temple, and he sways into it without meaning to.

The breath, it was—Clark iced up his own hand, Bruce realizes dimly.

"You also said your head had ached a little at first," Clark murmurs in his ear. "Which I'm guessing means it's been throbbing like hell since you got here, and you've been ignoring it the whole time."

"I plead the fifth," Bruce decides after a moment, deliberately light, and can't quite convince himself to move away from the huff of Clark's laugh against his cheek.

 

 

They know how long this is going to last. Bruce is reasonably confident he wouldn't attempt to deceive himself about the nature of the accident; if there were anything he needed to do to ensure his own return, surely he'd have told himself as much. And truthfully, from here, Bruce isn't even sure where he'd begin—the device is in the past. Perhaps he's kept it somewhere; perhaps the database is still available, tucked away on a backup somewhere in the Cave. But—

But if this does need solving, it'll take a lot more than the hour and a half remaining before his future self estimates he'll go back on his own. So he might as well wait and see.

It's only practical, he tells himself. Only reasonable. And if it should happen that it's also an undeniable pleasure, to have nothing to do but—but be around Clark for a little while—

It had been terrifying, earlier, to think this Clark knew him so well. But he discovers that in its own way, it's also something of a relief.

Because he no longer needs to guard himself. He can, this once, relax the white-knuckled grip with which he endeavors to restrain himself; because this Clark thinks nothing of being looked at too long by Bruce. This Clark only smiles—smiles, and breathes a bit more ice onto his own fingertips, and settles them to the ache at Bruce's temples, the throb at the base of his skull, the tension trailing down the nape of his neck, and smooths it all away. This Clark guides him to that massive sofa in the lounge, presses him down onto it, and then arranges himself alongside with breathtaking ease, thigh and shoulder brushing Bruce's, warm and steady.

"This is the Hall of Justice," Clark's telling him, murmuring to him in a low voice and digging his thumbs idly into the iron resistance of Bruce's shoulders. "That's what we call it, I mean—that's what everybody calls it, by now. It's our base of operations, and some of us even live here. Not you and me, but that's just because our cover identities won't really allow it. We have a suite upstairs anyway, though. Now and then we even manage to spend a weekend here without anybody blowing up a building or setting a city on fire."

He pauses, and Bruce should say something. Something pleasant and conversational. Something that skims neatly over the surface of everything he _could_ say about that: how transcendently implausible it sounds, how improbable, how beautiful. How difficult it is to imagine, that within five years' time there's even half a chance he might be—happy. That _Clark_ might be happy, with him.

But then Superman has always had a knack for achieving the impossible.

"Bruce," Clark says, because Bruce has missed his chance, stayed quiet for too long; because Clark probably heard the way the breath caught in the back of his throat a moment ago. "Bruce, look at me."

Bruce does it. Instantly, helplessly; as if Clark had even needed to ask.

"I've thought about it sometimes, you know," Clark says quietly. He tilts his head, leans and skims one hand up the side of Bruce's throat to thumb the line of his jaw. "I've thought about you, all those years ago. About what would happen if I could just go back, now that I know what you're like. You were alone, and you shouldn't have been. I wish you hadn't been."

"Clark—"

"Nobody was kissing you, back then," Clark adds, more softly still. "And I'm not going to get around to it for a while, which sucks. I wish I could fix that." He pauses, and then Bruce feels his knuckles curling under Bruce's chin, a gentle pressure wordlessly asking Bruce to turn his face a little.

And he shouldn't do it. Of course he shouldn't.

But he does it anyway, and Clark rewards him with a sweet little smile. "But I guess," Clark says, "that right now I sort of can."

He kisses Bruce slowly, carefully. One light brush against the corner of Bruce's mouth, at first, and then another, another; and then he starts to linger, hands cradling Bruce's face gently to keep him at just the right angle, to slant their lips together longer, longer. The first sweep of his tongue is almost a surprise, and Bruce finds a sound in his throat, belatedly brings his own hands up to clutch Clark's shoulders unsteadily, and then—

Then it all gets away from him. He can hardly keep up with it, Clark pressing in to taste him thoroughly and then easing back to let him breathe, biting at his mouth, hands tightening in Bruce's hair just hard enough to make him gasp—to open him up that much further, as if he hasn't already been cracked apart, peeled raw, by this Clark's touch alone; as if he has any secrets left to bare, to this Clark who knows him so fully and thoroughly. Who _knows_ him, and still—

Bruce meant what he'd said, earlier. There's no paradox here, no chicken or egg; the things he feels about Clark are already graven deep, carved in stone, irrevocable. Nothing this Clark does or doesn't do will change that.

But after kissing him like this, Bruce certainly has no hope of finding himself _less_ in love.

 

 

He has more warning than he expects, when it happens.

They're still kissing—more lazily, now, Bruce tipped back against the sofa and Clark braced over him, kneeling on the cushions to either side of Bruce's thighs. He's still touching Bruce's face, his throat, his hair, as if he can't work out where he most wants his hands to be; Bruce's own hands fell to Clark's hips at some point, though he finds himself sometimes overcome with desperation, suddenly winding an arm around the small of Clark's back to tug him closer. As if there's any closer to get.

And he'd be tempted to attribute his gradually-increasing sense of disorientation to the situation, to Clark above him and allowing Bruce to touch him like this, except that it's so physical a sensation that he actually has to pull away, to squeeze his eyes shut and swallow against the mounting dizziness.

"Bruce—"

"I'm fine," he says.

Because he suspects it's true. He remembers what his own future self's notes had said: _a time dilation effect_. If he was thrown here with not only physical but a kind of temporal velocity, space-time stretching around him like a rubber band—suddenly it occurs to him that perhaps, across what's been hours here in the future, his own body has been doing nothing but striking the workshop floor—

The pain in his head. A moment's impact, in the past; but here he's been feeling the sensation in slow motion, the first immediate throb of injury unnaturally distended.

He'd felt displaced, disoriented, dizzy, when he'd first arrived here. And he'd experienced part of that sensation in an instant of the past, but it had stretched out across minutes here. It only makes sense that he should feel the same thing in reverse, if he's about to go back.

"You're almost out of time, aren't you?" Clark's saying, with sudden urgency.

His estimate. Bruce pries an eye open; and he's the one who's presumably begun to move, technically speaking, as he's pulled away from here, but it feels as though it's the room—the sofa—Clark. He catches half a glimpse of a clock, and the numbers are smearing but the first one is a 4. No wonder his future self had been so vague, he thinks distantly.

"Clark," he hears himself say, tightening his hands with sudden helpless desperation—the ring is pressing into his finger, solid and real, except it isn't real yet; except he's about to lose this, all of this, when he's barely even let himself have it—

"Back there—I don't love you yet," Clark tells him, and it's just a fact but Clark says it like a confession, like a sin. "But I _will_. All right? I will. Don't give up on me. Please, Bruce—"

"Clark," he says again—or he tries to, he means to. But he's not sure it comes out before he—

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Clark scans the building in mid-air, and decides to hope Bruce opted for some sort of silent alarm that sets off alerts to his own systems in the Cave instead of something that's going to draw a lot of attention. Because he can't see a way in here that doesn't require some kind of authentication he won't be able to give, except breaking a window.

So that's what he does. He's faster than the shower of glass, not that it could have cut him if he'd stepped in it anyway, and within ten seconds he's close enough to touch Bruce.

He doesn't, for a moment—what if Bruce hurt his neck, his spine? What if Clark picking him up or moving him just makes it worse? Clark had heard _something_ , a sudden reverberating sound that might have been too low-pitched for human ears, and then as he'd focused in on it, already taking off, he'd caught an intake of breath. Somebody that close to whatever that was couldn't be good, he'd been thinking, and he'd put on an extra burst of speed and had been halfway over the bay to Gotham by the time he'd heard the muted crack of a body hitting a wall.

He hadn't known it would be Bruce until he'd realized which building it was. He'd made it a point to get familiar with any property in Gotham held by Wayne Enterprises or any subsidiary, if only so he wouldn't end up getting surprised by a Bat-level security system in the course of trying to fight any old everyday crime. And then he'd taken two seconds to decide how angry Bruce would probably be to learn that Clark had listened to him, even by accident; and then he'd broken the window and gone in anyway.

He's—he's still moving too fast, maybe, because for a moment he thinks Bruce isn't breathing. But then he comes to a real stop against the floor and leans down, and Bruce's eyes are still closed but he's grimacing, jaw tightening as he bites down on a noise Clark can hear anyway, in the back of his throat. His heart's beating, his lungs are working; Clark can smell blood, but only a little.

He finishes crouching and eases a hand under Bruce's head anyway. And yeah, there it is: no damage to the skull, just a split, an abrasion, to the thin skin at the back of the head, from hitting the wall and then sliding down it. He'll have one hell of a goose egg, probably, but Clark checks and can't see any bleeding in his brain. Just outside it. "Jesus, Bruce," he says, half on a sigh. "Are you okay?"

Bruce blinks his eyes open. They take a second to focus properly on Clark's face, and Clark's expecting a dozen things—for Bruce to scowl at him, or go unreadably blank, or jerk away from the touch even though he's bleeding from the head and should definitely get that looked at.

But all Bruce does is look up at him, for a long moment, and if his expression is anything it's sort of startled. When he does move, it's just to follow the line of Clark's wrist with one hand, and for an instant their fingers are overlapping, curved gently around the back of Bruce's head, curled into his hair.

Then Bruce must touch part of the wound—he doesn't flinch, exactly, but Clark can feel the sudden flicker of tension through him.

"Careful," Clark says automatically, even though Bruce is probably going to hate that.

But Bruce still doesn't yell at him. He blinks again, and then says, "What are you doing here?"

"I heard—" Clark looks around, spots the worktable and ... whatever the hell that is on top of it. "—uh, that thing, it made a noise when it went off. And then I heard you hit the wall."

"Ah," Bruce says, and looks away.

He moves under Clark's hands, and Clark reflexively reaches out to steady him—except he probably won't appreciate that either, oops.

Clark bites his lip. He's so sick of second-guessing himself; but he's been walking one hell of a tightrope with Bruce since Steppenwolf, and he doesn't want to screw that up if he can help it. Bruce has been alternating between straight-up avoiding Clark when he can, and a bland, inoffensively distant sort of amiability when Plan A fails him—because it's awkward, is Clark's best guess, having to come face-to-face over and over again with a guy you tried to kill, who kind of tried to kill you back, and then it turned out you had to raise him from the dead to ask him if he wouldn't mind playing on your team.

Bruce has a lot of lines. He crossed a bunch of them himself just by forming the League at all, just admitting he maybe needed a little help saving the planet from angry axe-wielding warlords from space. And Clark's been trying hard not to cross any more of them, not to give Bruce any reasons to regret it, but—Bruce has a _lot_ of lines. If Clark had had to guess, Superman showing up in civilian clothes to fuss over him after a lab accident is at least toeing the edges of a good half-dozen of them.

But Bruce is bleeding from the head, dammit. Clark can't leave him here like this.

"Are you—is there somewhere I could take you?" he says, fumbling, cautious, braced for Bruce to take it all the wrong ways.

"No, that's fine," Bruce says evenly, looking away.

"It's no trouble," Clark says, emboldened; Bruce hasn't shoved his hands away, hasn't glared at him or anything.

Maybe he hit his head even harder than Clark thought.

"Clark—"

"Bruce, it's past two in the morning and you're bleeding from the head. If you try to tell me you're fine to drive yourself home, I'm not going to believe you."

He tries to keep his tone light—not mocking, just gentle, friendly. Reasonable.

"Let me give you a lift," he adds. "Please."

Bruce doesn't answer right away. The quiet stretches; he's looking at Clark again, and there's something strange and sort of—soft—about his face, his eyes.

And then he withdraws his hand from where it was still half-tangled with Clark's, and gives a rueful glance to the dark smear of blood across his fingertips. "I suppose you've got a point," he says.

"Sure I do," Clark manages, and hopes he doesn't look half as bewildered as he feels.

 

 

It's a short flight to the lake house.

It—feels a little longer, though, with Bruce gripping his shoulders like this, Clark's own arms looped carefully around Bruce's back. There have been a couple instances with the League where Clark's ended up as Batman's impromptu exit strategy, but Bruce isn't wearing the suit right now, isn't armored up; and it's different, holding onto him like this when there's just—when he's just a person with a head wound, wearing what's probably a ludicrously expensive shirt.

Clark lands them on the dock. Bruce seems steady enough on his feet, but he keeps one hand on Clark's shoulder for a moment after they come down, so Clark doesn't let go of him right away.

"I'm fine," Bruce says, and only then seems to notice where his hand is, lifting it away just a little too quickly to look casual about it.

"Sure," Clark agrees.

It's possible his tone comes out a bit too blithe to sound sincere. Bruce's eyes narrow, his mouth flattening—but there's a quirk at one corner despite his best efforts.

And then he clears his throat and looks away, and says quietly, "Thank you."

Clark stares at him. "I, uh. Of course," he hears himself say.

And now he's given the game away, with that stuttered bafflement; Bruce cuts him a sideways glance and clears his throat again.

"It's not the head wound," he murmurs, very dryly, and then pauses for a second. "Coming back, adjusting to this, to the League—it's been difficult for you. I haven't made it any easier. I apologize for that."

Clark shrugs a shoulder. "It's been difficult for you, too," he ventures. "I understand."

And he means it, but somehow that just makes Bruce's jaw tighten—makes him twist his face away, bringing a hand up to rub a thumb tiredly along the bridge of his nose. "Of course you do," he says, very low.

All at once, it makes Clark's heart ache a little, unexpected: just looking at him like that, standing there, blood from his own head on one hand and the other shielding his face; sleeves rolled up and shoulders bowed. He doesn't look like Batman, now. He looks tired, and sort of lonely. The way you might expect a guy to look, when he has nothing better to do in the middle of the night than go be alone in a room poking some alien technology to see whether it tries to bite back.

Not that Clark's throwing stones, as the guy with nothing better to do than fly that guy home before he can give himself a real concussion.

"Look," he says aloud. "I do understand. If you'd rather work with Superman as part of the League and nothing else, then that's okay. But I can't say I'd mind if we were—if we took the time to get to know each other."

And for some reason that suddenly brings Bruce's gaze snapping to him, Bruce's eyes wide and dark, something flickering across his face that Clark can't quite name.

"I'll—keep it in mind," he says, after a long moment, dry but not unkind.

He moves to pass Clark, then, crossing the dock toward the house. And it's not an accident, not with Bruce; it can't be an accident, that the backs of his fingers brush Clark's wrist for an instant.

"Goodnight," he adds over his shoulder, sliding open a broad tall pane of glass that apparently doubles as a door.

"Goodnight," Clark echoes, inane, and then stares after him for way too long.

It's not a big deal, he tells himself. It probably doesn't mean anything; one civil conversation isn't evidence that Bruce likes him any better today than he did yesterday. It doesn't make them friends.

But the thought isn't harsh enough to dull the warm bright hope filling up his chest, isn't loud enough to drown out the sudden inexplicable pounding of his heart, and when he takes off from the end of the dock into the night sky, he can't seem to stop smiling.

 

 


End file.
